Theres a Fantasy in those Hills

Well back to it on the bloggin' after the last update I left you at the burrito parking lots with some great intentions. We loaded Lizzy's little red subi and drove down the 49 all the way to old Jackson, CA. As I faded off to sleep I mumbled some vague direction to the Salt Springs Lake, the takeout. an hour or so later we arrived beat down and ready to spend another night in the dirt.

We woke buzzing for the mission about to come knocking on our front doors. Another 3ish hours of driving past Bear Valley and up to the hi-way 4 bridge crossing the N. fork of the Mokelumne we met our good compadre Grant Korgan for a nice 3 man 1 woman mission into "landia de mierda."

We only got a hand full of pictures down the entire run, but a huge archive of sick video. That will come later, maybe a Flow III or a Cali movie???? Anywho back to it we camped below a great sliding drop high in the run for our first night, and I froze my petute off next to the fire that died around midnight. In the morning we were greeted with a sick gorge stacked with big slides including "Big Boy Pants"

Me on the entrance of B.B.P the last piece you can't see is a huge slide around the boulder. Sicktor Rictor!

Then a nice long second day of running the gorges of the river, all except the "I want my Mommy" & "Cataract Canyon" gorge's brought us down to our camp. The same camp I shared over a year ago with the Kiwi crew brought back great memories from my first trip down this epic 3 day journey. A very mellow morning spent story telling and sipping coffee brought us to the money of the run "Day 3.


Grant Korgan on the Dreamy Fantastic Fantasy Falls.

Starting off the day running the "Green Monster" a so scary 5 foot ledge to a straight vertical 10 foot wave boof lead us hot headed into the bottom 3 biggens. Getting to the F.F. we fired up some laps on it and rallied down to the Island Slide. Lat year I ran a piece of this monster backwards so I was determined to have a good line. I scouted for a good 20-30 minutes and gave her. Had a greasy line and came out the bottom high on life. More boogie water led us to the Grand Finale "Show me your Tits"!

The big slide
The Thing
What ever you want to call it...

I had a huge beat down in here last year and it looked bigger and harder to run this time around so I was pretty nervous above this one and rigged my boat to swim.

Chris right above a nice little swim on the newly named "Show me your Tits!" By the way that kid still owes those river gods a bootie.

Then I somehow came hot into the bottom hole and back deck rolled out the bottom holding my paddle high stoked to make it through the Zambezi sized hole with out a beating. With that in said I then watched Grant take the beating of his life and swim at the bottom. All happy with such a great trip, such perfect water levels, and a paddle out to think back on every drop we made it to the cars tired and ready for bed time. Fantasy is my 4 or 5 favorite trip in this neck of the wood which is saying more than a lot, this run is truly incredible I hope that some day I will be fortunate enough to paddle this canyon again.

Later E.G.